Queen Hortense eBook

“She is surely dead, the poor queen,”
said Hortense, with so sad a smile that her son turned
pale, and his eyes filled with tears.

From Chantilly they wandered on to Ermenonville and
Morfontaine, for Hortense desired to show her son
all the places she had once seen in the days of fortune
with the emperor and her mother. These places
now seemed as solitary and deserted as she herself
was. How great the splendor that had once reigned
in Ermenonville, when the emperor had visited the owner
of the place in order to enjoy with him the delights
of the chase! In the walks of the park, in which
thousands of lamps had then shone, the grass now grew
rankly; a miserable, leaky boat was now the only conveyance
to the Poplar Island, sacred to the memory of Jean
Jacques, on whose monument Hortense and Louis Napoleon
now inscribed their names. Morfontaine appeared
still more desolate; the allies had sacked it in 1815,
and it had not been repaired since then. In Morfontaine,
Hortense had attended a magnificent festival given
by Joseph Bonaparte, then its owner, to his imperial
brother.

In St. Denis there were still more sacred and beautiful
remembrances for Hortense, for here was situated the
great college for the daughters of high military officers,
of which Hortense had been the protectress. She
dared not show herself, for she well knew that she
was not forgotten here; here there were many who still
knew and loved her, and she could only show herself
to strangers. But she nevertheless visited the
church, and descended with Louis Napoleon into the
vaults. Louis XVIII. alone reposed in the halls
which the empire had restored for the reception of
the new family of rulers, adopted by France. Alas!
he who built these halls, the Emperor Napoleon, now
reposed under a weeping-willow on a desolate island
in the midst of the sea, and he who had deposed him
now occupied the place intended for the sarcophagus
of the emperor.

While wandering through these silent and gloomy halls,
Hortense thought of the day on which she had come
hither with the emperor to inspect the building of
the church. And that time she had been ill and
suffering, and with the fullest conviction she had
said to her mother that she, Queen Hortense, would
be the first that would be laid to rest in the vault
of St. Denis. Now, after so many years, she descended
into it living and had hardly a right to visit it.

But there was another grave, another monument to her
memories, beside which Hortense desired to pray.
This was the grave of the Empress Josephine, in the
church at Ruelle.

With what emotions did she approach this place and
kneel down beside the grave-mound! Of all that
Josephine had loved, there remained only Hortense
and her son, a solitary couple, who were now secretly
visiting the place where Hortense’s mother reposed.
The number of flowers that adorned the monument proved
that Josephine was at least resting in the midst of
friends, who still held her memory sacred, and this
was a consolation for her daughter.